Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/politics__society/us_politics/page/35/)
This is not an oil “spill” we are facing, the way water might spill from a dish or oil from a tanker—a finite amount in the first place, and then we clean up. This is more like piercing a hole into the Caverns of Hell, so that they pour forth without limit.
The story of Lt. Dan Choi’s protest action is a useful entry point into a discussion of the current trajectory of gay and lesbian organizing because it emblematizes one major reality of the activist moment: the widespread sense of urgency in pursuit of the assimilationist (rather than radically transformative) goals.
Has the Obama presidency failed? No, resistance to social and political change
is not a sign of failure—it’s inevitable, and can be overcome.
Did we fail on health care? The debate is vigorous. Richard Kirsch and Lauren Reichelt respond.
. . . it relies on the idea of providing temporary worker visas to lower-skilled immigrants who are apparently expected to send their money home, providing American farmers, agribusiness, and other employers with a source of cheap labor that can depress the wages of other laborers.
Yet what the critics maintain is that Obama and congressional Democrats, inheriting an economy and political system in crisis after decades of ideological Republican policies committed to downsizing government and serving the tax-cutting interests of the rich and the corporate elites, blew a unique opportunity to teach Americans a new way of thinking about politics and economy.
The Left has been left whimpering that health care reform did not go far enough, that we should adopt “Medicare for All.” But the claim that this bill is middle-of-the-road or too pragmatic has not found any significant public sentiment and fails in the face of the financial pressure on government.
Four years ago when several key labor unions formed Change to Win as an alternative umbrella organization to the AFL-CIO, many of us hoped that a new vision of the labor movement was being born–one that would go beyond the economics-only focus of industrial unionism and see unions as an important social context for building a greater sense of community and a new universal vision of a society based on empathy and compassion for other human beings.
Abolish Wall Street. Build Real Wealth.
How can we frame traditional progressive platform issues in a way that gives them the spiritual reverence they deserve?
The country has changed a great deal since Howard Zinn boarded his “moving train” a half-century ago. It has changed along very different trajectories. Some have been rich in achievement, often exhilarating, and full of promise for a better future. Others, in part in reaction to them, are ugly and ominous in their import. Which will prevail? It’s hard to overestimate the significance of the question. It’s hard to think of a better way to gain a clear understanding of what is at stake, and what can be done about it, than by reading, and pondering, the fascinating story of Howard Zinn’s crucial and intimate participation at every point, in thought and action.
Barack Obama—the keynoter at the Democratic Convention—is a new political talent with enormous potential. Speaking with striking eloquence of the “politics of hope,” he electrified the Democrats convened in Boston in language appealing to Republicans and non-voters as well.
The portents certainly are terrible. Not even the happiest of possible scenarios can be expected to return us to the level of civil liberties we assumed normal before 9/11–not in the foreseeable future, and, if we believe the security services and the politicians of both parties, not ever.
The United States holds a position of military and political dominance unique in world history. The Roman Empire surrounded the Mediterranean Sea but held no sway in the rest of the world. The British Empire was global in reach, but confronted countervailing powers in Europe and in the continents where it had outposts. Neither constraint applies to the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
In this time of ideological upheaval, when the old ideologies of left and right, of socialism, liberalism, and conservatism, no longer capture the political imagination the way they once did, new political visions are required. Some have tried to formulate a “Third Way” between social democracy and conservatism. Others, such as Michael Lerner, have proposed a more spiritually-oriented approach to transcend left and right. I would like to present another vision, that of Integral Politics.